Ethics Villain CNN Pushes the First Amendment Envelope

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

What this despicable “enemy of the people” is doing by deliberately publicizing an anti-ICE app may be legal, but it is undeniably unethical. The Trump administration should prosecute anyway.

Joshua Aaron (above: he looks exactly like I assumed he looks!) is a musician and software developer who, because he’s an anti-American, pro-lawbreaking asshole, created an app called ICEBlock. It’s a descriptive name: it allows advocates of open borders and opponents of law enforcement to post sightings of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers across the country. Then the law-breakers they are seeking can more effectively avoid capture, and those who want to attack, harm, kill, or impede ICE agents have a metaphorical “leg up.” That’s nice.

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Does Jazz Really Need DEI?

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

I would say that DEI has more rapidly than most reached the final evolutionary stage noted by philosopher Eric Hoffer, who famously observed that every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket. The problem with that is that DEI was never a great cause to begin with. However, it has definitely entered its racket stage, and maybe its certifiably insane stage. Behold…

Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice—no, I’m not making that up— at Boston’s Berklee College of Music has issued the results of a study that claims to show that because “male-identified jazz educators” outnumber “female-identified counterparts” six to one, it is proof that jazz “remains predominantly male due to a biased system.” The Institute’s website asks,“What would jazz sound like in a culture without patriarchy?” One wag’s answer: “Probably like nothing at all.”

Indeed most jazz musicians and composer are male. If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and if any variation from demographic equality proves bias, oppression and discrimination in your DEI worldview, then this phenomenon is sinister. Researcher Lara Pellegrinelli PhD is an “ethnomusicologist” who contributed to the study. She blathers, “To identify each jazz faculty member by gender, we examined the pronouns we encountered in these sources—and found only “he” and “she” in reference to the educators in our study. This is why we use the terminology “female-identified” and “male-identified” for our data, as opposed to sex assigned at birth or the descriptors “female-identifying” and “male-identifying,” which suggests a more active process of participant self-identification.”

Oh.

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On Gallup’s “American Pride” Survey

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

In four graphs, here are the result’s of Gallup’s latest survey…

Here is Gallup’s (weak, superficial, misleading, cowardly) analysis…

“At the beginning of the 21st century, U.S. adults were nearly unanimous in saying they were extremely or very proud to be Americans. But that national unity has eroded over the past 25 years due to a combination of political and generational changes. Democrats today are much less likely than in the past to express pride in their country; in fact, their national pride has hit a new low. Additionally, Generation Z and millennials are much less proud of their country than their elders are.

These changes have occurred mostly over the past decade, and have done so amid greater pessimism about the economic prospects for young people, widespread dissatisfaction with the state of the nation, greater ideological divides between the parties, unfavorable images of both parties, and intense partisan rancor during the Trump and Biden administrations.”

Gee, what happened at the beginning of the 21st Century that could have triggered a down-turn in pride in the nation? Well…the nation was slowly coming out of a slimy sex scandal in the White House in which the President lied to the nation (“I did not have sex with that woman”…because, see, where I come from blow-jobs aren’t considered “sex,” see…), his wife enabled the lie (“a vast right-wing conspiracy”), and an entire political party reversed its supposed concern for feminism and women’s rights to deny their POTUS’s flagrant sexual harassment guilt, nominating as his successor the Vice President who had participated in that gaslighting. Meanwhile, the opposing party nominated a weak. mush-mouthed candidate whose main credential was being the amiable son of his former President father, and the election ended in a virtual tie with the key state’s popular vote confounded by multiple instances of incompetence (the “butterfly ballot”), and the subsequent recount marked by Florida (partisan, Democrat-dominated) courts ignoring the state’s laws, with the resulting mess having to be fixed by the U.S. Supreme Court. The election ended up with the winner losing the popular vote for the first time since 1888, which meant to large chunk of the under-educated American public that Bush was an illegitimate President. Then the Democratic Party began a still-running false narrative that the election had been “stolen” with the complicity of the Supreme Court.

THAT’s what.

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Ethics Quote of the Week: Prof. Glenn Reynolds

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

“Most of the economic benefit of colleges and universities, and especially of elite ones, is distributional in nature — that is, wealth flows toward people who have the credentials they offer, but the credentials don’t actually promote wealth, they just get you past the gatekeepers.”

—-Conservative law professor and pundit Glenn Reynolds on his substack essay, “What is College Good For?”

Essentially Reynolds, who is the Beauchamp Brogan Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee College of Law can be fairly called a representative of our system of higher education himself, so his searing critique deserves some attention an thought. I appreciate the essay because I have long held the conviction that college itself is a fraud on the American people, distorts our power and economic structure away from merit and talent and toward wealth, elitism and purchased credentials that don’t mean what they pretend to mean, and a lifetime of experience as a student, graduate, employer and organization creator and leader supports and continues to confirm that conclusion.

Reynold is right. His analysis would have been right 40 years ago, when I stood up at a D.C. conference of “educators” and asked why all the discussion had focused on secondary school and college diplomas being essential to get “well-paying jobs”and none of it—literally none—about making our rising generations curious, competent, diligent, literate, analytical, creative, erudite, better thinkers and better citizens. The whole conference room booed me! It’s one of my most cherished memories. It also was signature significance regarding the fraudulent nature of the American education system.

Prof. Reynold gets it, and, not to diminish his essay, but it shouldn’t be so hard to get. The scam continues to thrive because the people who haven’t been to college don’t realize what a waste of time, resources and money it is in so many ways, and those who use the degrees as golden ticket credentials don’t have the integrity to admit the truth.

Reynold begins,

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Being Married Without Your Consent? Yeah, I’d Say This Is “Toe in a Plug of Tobacco” Level Unethical: “Someone Has Been Very Careless”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Ethics Alarms has often cited the dry desiccated toe in the plug of tobacco that is the essence of “res ipsa loquitur,” or “the thing speaks for itself”: “Someone has been very careless.”

This leads me to the bizarre experience of a Texas man, whose name so far has been withheld, presumably because he feels like an idiot. He says he was married to his ex-fiancée without his knowledge. The 42-year-old victim was in a committed relationship with 36-year-old Kristin Marie Spearman. They were about to get a Wayne County marriage license but got into a heated argument that culminated in his breaking off their romance. His ex-fiancée was not one to give up without a fight, however.

Her ex- received a gift bag from Bath & Body Works containing some products along with a copy of an officiated marriage license with his and Spearman’s names on it and a photo of his ex-fiancee holding up the document legally declaring them to be husband and wife. Kristin had managed to get a local pastor to certify the marriage even though the groom wasn’t in attendance. She then took the certified marriage license to her local county clerk’s office and filed it with officials. As far as the records go, it’s a legal marriage.

Spearman has been arrested and charged with third-degree felony stalking. The pastor, meanwhile, has a lot of explaining to do.

New York City’s Democrats Remind Us Why It’s an Ethical Duty To Vote (and They Didn’t)

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Apparently less than 5% of all New York City residents voted for Zohran Mamdani, the charismatic, anti-Israel, slick crypto-communist who is now poised to become mayor of the City That Doesn’t Think—oops! I mean “sleep.” Never mind though: winning the crowded primary last week made him an instant celebrity, gave him a platform to spew his toxic ideology far and wide, confounding the dim, the gullible, the uneducated and the America-haters, and makes him a genuine threat to take over the drowning Democratic Party by apathy.

People who are stupid, ignorant and don’t care shouldn’t vote, but when a majority of potential voters who aren’t stupid and ignorant and do care also don’t vote, democracy not only doesn’t work, it is dangerous.

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Why People Don’t Trust Lawyers…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

A personal injury law firm whose name will remain unspoken “explains” on its website why exorbitant contingent fees are justifiable and ethical. The page says that a lawyer receiving a higher potential fee will probably do a better job representing the client than one who will receive a lesser proportion of the settlement or damages: more motivation!

This is exactly the opposite of what the ethics rules of every jurisdiction mandate. A lawyer is obligated to represent a client to the best of his or her ability regardless of the fee, including when the representation is pro bono, that is, for no fee at all. A lawyer who calibrates the effort and passion he or she puts into a case based on the size of the fee, negotiated or potential, is an unethical lawyer, an untrustworthy lawyer.

A bad lawyer.

And yet here is a law firm stating, “The more you pay us, the better job we’ll do.”

Disgusting.

But, somehow, not surprising….

On the Illegality of Illegal Aliens

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Guest column by Ryan Harkins

We have this report from HotAir explaining that that the ICE raid on the meat packing plant in Nebraska was not simply due to the fact that the plant hired so many illegals. Instead, the focus of the raid was on an identity-theft ring running out of that plant.

I want to make it clear I am all in favor of whoever in the world who wants to come to the United States to make a better life for themselves should have the opportunity. I’d give top priority to those who wish to become US citizens, but I’m generally in favor of letting into the country far more people than our current immigration system allots. How many more, I can’t say, as I’ve not crunched the numbers. But in general more immigrants means more workers, more production, higher demand for services, all which contribute to a growing economy that enriches everyone here.

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Here Is How Arrogant and Delusional Harvard Is: It Really Thinks It Can Prevail In Public Opinion Over The President of the United States…

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The Harvard Alumni Magazine arrived yesterday. Above is the cover and the illustration for its feature section about the University’s “resistance” to President Trump’s completely reasonable, responsible and justifiable demands that the most visible, influential, prestigious and wealthy university in the United States stop dedicating itself to undermining American values, indoctrinating students in anti-American biases, provide intellectual diversity on its faculty, cease discriminating against whites, males and Asians, and stop enabling flagrant Jew hatred on campus.

To Harvard’s credit, the alumni magazine makes a pass at even-handedness, even highlighting an alumnus who writes that “no private institution has a right to demand that taxpayers fund discrimination, exclusion and intolerance.” But most of the issue is devoted to familiar anti-Trump victim-mongering, including an essay extolling the work of a non-binary (or something) professor “whose data shows how—and when—authoritarians fall.”

“Authoritarianism” has joined “sexism,” “racism,” “violence,” “insurrection” and other rhetorical weapons of the Left as infinitely flexible accusations steeped in double standards. A President who uses his constitutional powers to pursue policies the Left opposes is an “authoritarian.” A President who weaponizes the legal system to imprison and persecute his political opposition is not—as long as he is a Democrat.

I mean, just to pull a fantastic hypothetical out of the air…

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Ethics Dunce: Justice Elena Kagan

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

This is so disillusioning. I supported Elena Kagan’s appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. She was obviously qualified, had the right experience for the job, and seemed capable of objective, non-partisan analysis unlike Barack Obama’s disastrous “historic” first nominee to the Court, the dim bulb Sonia Sotamayor, and Biden’s arguably worse choice, DEI Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. I have tried to cut Kagan a break for so often sticking to her less able woke female colleagues like the Three Little Maid from School in “The Mikado” in 6-3 decisions. I understand why loyalty to the team might have its long-range advantages. Often I can imagine Kagan rolling her eyes at one of the fatuous Sotomayor dissents based on feelz instead of the law. I get it.

But this time Kagan’s collegiality with her intellectual inferiors led to a breach of integrity. The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in Trump v. CASA, Inc., last week was much needed, greatly deserved, and necessary to stop an egregious abuse of judicial power for partisan agendas. The decision struck down the sudden fad of nationwide injunctions by lower courts, the Trump II weapon of choice employed by Democrats seeking not to allow the elected President they hate do the job he was elected to do. The “wise Latina” issued another one of her amateurish dissents. It was Kagan, however, joining with Jackson in endorsing that dissent, who really disgraced herself.

In 2022, when conservatives were the ones seeking injunctive relief from his President Biden’s Executive Orders (if in fact they were his EOs), Kagan expressed disapproval of nationwide injunctions.  “This can’t be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks and leave it stuck for the years that it takes to go through a normal process,” she said. 

So she’s a partisan hack then, cutting the cloth of her supposedly objective legal analysis to match the dictates of the Democratic Party. Good to know.

(The ethics password is integrity.)

Justice Kagan doesn’t have it.